Summary
The DFINITY Foundation currently has 54MM ICP staked, giving it a relative voting power in the IC ecosystem of 22% as of March 30, 2022. This post goes into further detail.
Background
As publicly listed, at network Genesis, the DFINITY Foundation got assigned 23.6% of the 469MM supply, roughly 110.6MM ICP. The Foundation staked part of this ICP, resulting in a voting power around Genesis of 38%, since less ICP was staked then than today.
As expected, not everyone who has ICP has staked yet. We foresee many more people staking. So the DFINITY Foundation has been deliberately and carefully choosing how much ICP to stake as it did not want to have too much voting power.
Why the DFINITY Foundation stakes
We believe staking ICP is the right decision for a few reasons:
- It signals to the community that the Foundation is betting long term on the ICP ecosystem
- In the long term, the Foundation will use its rewards to finance its R&D for the network
That being said, the Foundation will be careful about not having too much voting power.
When it comes to determining an entity’s relative voting power, there are two main factors:
- The amount of tokens that an entity has and its neurons’ attributes such as dissolve delay and age.
- How an entity compares to the number of ICP staked and the respective neurons’ attributes
We will examine both in this piece with regards to the DFINITY Foundation.
Factor 1: Amount of tokens the Foundation’s neurons have
The DFINITY Foundation has the following neurons:
- Neuron IDs:
- Voting:
- 27
- 2000-2055, and 4018-4037
- Non-voting:
- 4012-4017 are dissolving with delay less than six months
- Dissolved:
- 4000-4011
- Voting:
- Total ICP staked: 54 MM
Being practical, could the Foundation create more neurons? Yes, that is why we intend to have a dashboard which shows the community the latest data on the voting power of the Foundation.
Factor 2: Amount of ICP staked in the NNS
The second factor is trickier because it depends on the actions of others in the ecosystem. If not enough people stake or even vote, the Foundation could find itself accidentally having too much voting power overall, which could discourage other entities and leaders from participating. That is why the Foundation has not staked all the ICP it could have.
To be concrete:
| Staked ICP | Voting Power | % of total | |
|---|---|---|---|
| DFINITY | 54,391,738 | 89,666,826 | 22% |
| Total | 412,036,526 | 100% |
As more people and entities are staking, the Foundation believes it can stake more of its ICP, locking it away for years. Whenever the Foundation increases the amount of ICP staked, we will communicate it.